1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a method and to an apparatus for the depletion of at least one component of a fluid medium. The object frequently exists of separating individual components from fluids, for example from liquid mixtures, with very different processes being able to be used for this purpose. A method for the depletion of useful materials or harmful substances is adsorption, for example, in which one or more materials of a mixture are bound to an adsorber and are separated from the further mixture components in this manner. In addition to adsorption, a plurality of other separation processes are also known, such as membrane separation processes, for example.
2.Description of the Prior Art
The aforesaid separation processes frequently have the disadvantage that their efficiency is not satisfactory or reduces in the course of the separation process. For example, the problem exists with the use of adsorbers that when there is a low load of the fluid medium with the component to be separated, they only adsorb a comparatively small amount of this component so that the efficiency of this separation process is correspondingly low in this case. The same applies accordingly, for example, to membrane processes whose efficiency at low concentrations is likewise comparatively low.